Physics 232C Announcements
August 28, 2006
Welcome to Virtual University. PHY 232C is now open. The course syllabus can be viewed at:
http://www.pa.msu.edu/courses/2006fall/PHY232C/
All the reading and homework sets are on Lon-Capa. There are instructions for using Lon-Capa in the syllabus. There are weekly homework sets due on Fridays at 6:00PM. The first assignment is due on September 8. All of the homework is inside the HOMEWORK folder at the bottom of the course table of contents.
There is a help room staffed by Graduate Teaching Assistants in The Strosacker Learning Center, Room 1248 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building. The help room will be open Thursday and Friday, starting next week. Students should spend several hours per week, as needed, visiting the help room to work with other students and consult with teaching assistants. Both on and off campus students should visit the MSU campus for this purpose.
You can post questions to your fellow students using the Post Discussion option within Lon-Capa. Although you may get sufficient assistance on some of the less complicated questions via the “Post Discussion” option, you will get better service working with the graduate teaching assistants and other students in the help room.
Using the Post Discussion option is a good way for you to contribute to and discuss material from class. I encourage you to contribute information and to offer descriptions to help your fellow students in understanding the material, but I strongly encourage you to give more than a short solution to a problem without any discussion of process or context. Although giving just a short solution to a problem is done with good intentions, it can have the unintended effect of depriving others of the very useful learning opportunity that comes with working out and discussing a problem. Some versions of some homework problems will appear on exams; anyone who simply plugs in what is posted on the discussion board without understanding the underlying concepts is likely to have a very difficult time working these and similar problems on an exam.
There will be four midterms and one final exam given on the MSU campus – the dates, times and location are shown in the syllabus. There will be no make-up exams. However, if you miss a midterm exam for any reason you will be allowed to drop this exam and the midterm portion of your final grade will be based on the other three midterm exams. Only one mid term exam will be dropped. If you take all four midterms, your lowest midterm exam score will be dropped when calculating your final grade. The final exam is mandatory and will not be dropped. There will be an extra credit opportunity offered during the week of Thanksgiving – see the syllabus for details.
If you are living far from the MSU campus at the time of the exam, beyond a reasonable commuting distance, or if you are traveling with an MSU-sponsored program, you may be able to arrange a proctored off-campus exam. Arrangements must be made well in advance of the exam – requests made after the deadline will not be accommodated and you will have to take the exam at MSU. See the exam section of the syllabus for details and deadlines for arranging an off-campus exam.
Also included in the exam section of the syllabus are some midterm exams given in last summer's course.
Richard Hallstein
Instructor
Department of Physics and Astronomy